Page 128 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

factor might have been that we were accustomed to having most of the possession in games. When that
advantage transferred itself to the opposition it might have damaged our confidence and concentration.
There was some credence in the theory that our players were unsettled by having to play a subservient
role: even a player such as Giggs, or Ji-Sung Park, who, in the quarter-final against Chelsea, tackled

everybody and was up and down the pitch all day. We never saw him, in that way, against Barcelona,
whose starting XI was: Valdés; Alves, Piqué, Abidal, Mascherano; Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta; Messi,
Villa and Pedro.
They took the lead through Pedro from one of Xavi’s countless clever passes but Rooney equalised
for us after a quick exchange with Giggs. But then the Barcelona carousel really started spinning, with
Messi at the controls. He and Villa scored the goals that finished us off in Van der Sar’s last game for
the club.

I made an error at half-time. I was still focusing on winning the game and told Rooney he needed to
keep running into those gaps behind the full-backs. ‘We’ll win the game if you keep doing that,’ I
urged him. I forgot the big issue with playing Barcelona. So many of their games were effectively won
in the first 15 minutes of the second half. I should have mentioned that to my players. I might have
been better assigning Park to mark Messi for the first 15 minutes and pushing Rooney wide left. If we
had employed those tactics, we might just have sneaked it. We would still have been able to counter-

attack. Those changes would have left Busquets free, so maybe we would have been driven back
towards our box, but we’d have posed more of a threat, with Rooney attacking from a wide left
position.
I had intended to replace Valencia after 10 minutes of the second half, but then Fábio was attacked
by cramps again and I was forced to re-jig around his injury. My luck in finals was generally good.
Favour deserted me in this one. On the balance of all those big games and the success I had enjoyed, I
could hardly start pitying myself at Wembley, the scene of United’s win over Benfica in 1968.

We thought we might have a chance at corner kicks but they never came our way. As our defeat was
confirmed, there was no smugness about Barcelona. Not once did they flaunt their superiority. Xavi’s
first move after the final whistle was to make a move for Scholes’ jersey. Footballers should have a
role model. They should be saying to themselves: ‘He’s where I want to get to.’ I had it with Denis
Law. Denis was a year and a half older than me and I looked at him and said, ‘That’s what I want to
be.’

In the days after that loss I began taking a serious look at the coaching in our academy. Gary
Neville, Paul Scholes and I exchanged a lot of opinions. I looked at appointing another technical
coach to the academy. Our club was always capable of producing great players and Barcelona’s next
wave were not better than ours. No way. Thiago was on a par with Welbeck and Cleverley but there
was no fear about the rest of theirs coming through.
Looking ahead is vital. We were on to Phil Jones long before that Champions League final. I tried
to buy him in 2010 but Blackburn would not sell. Ashley Young was bought to replace Giggs. The

goalkeeping situation was all settled in December. Granted, David de Gea had a torrid start to his
United career, but he would develop. Smalling and Evans were outstanding prospects. We had Fábio
and Rafael, and Welbeck and Cleverley were coming through; Nani was 24, Rooney 25. We had a
nucleus of young talent.
We shed five that summer because with Jones joining it wasn’t going to be easy for Wes Brown or
John O’Shea to make the starting XI. They were good servants to me. The horrible part of

management is telling people who have given their all for you that there is no longer a place for them
in your plans. After the Premier League title parade, in the rain, we returned to the school from where